Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Shiny New Things

Every once and awhile, after I disappear into an extended
brain fog and cease contributing to the world at large...or small...my e-mail
distributer will take matters into its own hands and arbitrarily send out a
past retort, just to wake me up.

So that’s why, if you’re a subscriber, you may have received
something about Christmas and cars, a while back.

Sorry...but I take no responsibility for my artificial
intelligence. I have enough trouble managing my actual intelligence, or lack
thereof

However, I guess this AI knew what it was doing, since here I
am...unintelligently intact...but still lackadaisical and indifferent to all
things retorting.

And since the topic of said past retort was cars...and I
just bought a new car, I suppose I have to pay attention...at least a little.

I have to admit, lately, the universe seems to be dangling
many shiny new things, in addition to cars, in my direction, so my personal
distraction quotient is way over the top.

Not that I ever had a lot of luck with focus in the past.

I think it has something to do with mixing up my contact
lenses.

The thought of sitting quietly in front of a computer
screen, pecking out one inanity after another for a reason I have yet to figure
out has been more often than not pushed aside by my propensity for counting
raindrops.

There’s a lot of them...and someone has to do it...maybe.

And why stare at a screen full of repeating binary numbers
for hours at a time, when I can stare out the window repeating my jalapeno tuna
sandwich for hours at a time?

Yet who am I to ignore a cosmic nudge...so I guess I better
tell you about my new car.

I bought a new car.

What...you want more?

Okay...fine.

Yeah...it was time...as much as I tried to ignore the
exhaust fumes rising through the newly formed hole in the floor, it was
becoming harder and harder to scotch tape the crack in the windshield back
together.

Plus the 8 track player kept spitting out satanic verses,
over my Jackson Five cartridges, no matter how many times I adjusted the
tracking.

I don’t like all the bargaining, shin kicking, face slapping
and general animosity that takes place across and under the table.

And that’s usually before we even leave the house.

As I said, which I’ll repeat, because I assume you’re like
me and not paying that much attention, my last excursion into the car buying
quagmire was a mere five years ago.

Really not all that long ago as far as real time is
concerned, but a lifetime in car years.

Which I quickly learned since, as I pulled up to my old dealership,
I found it abandoned.

Now, under normal circumstances, with most people—normal
people—this would have been fine; unless, of course, you once had a life
changing experience where your old neighborhood best friend suddenly moved away
without telling you, which resulted in spending the majority of your days for a year and a half knocking tirelessly,
yet uselessly, on the front door only to be told over and over again to “Go away...they don’t live here anymore!”

Just sayin....

Luckily, now, through the magic of Google and mobile phones,
I was easily able to track down the new dealer’s location, plus my old
friend...who has apparently moved...again, suddenly, and changed their phone
number...again.

So weird....

Anyway, I wish I had as colorful a story to tell you about
this new car buying experience as I did my old car buying experience, but this
one was pretty straight forward. Mostly because Z and I are the most boring
people in the world and tend to always buy the same make and model, but in a
different color, mostly because they keep changing the shades of blue. And of
course we’re all in with the latest updates and modern amenities.

There a big fancy video screen on the dash that shows you all
kinds of details about your driving experience and what your neighbor’s having
for dinner.

It took me a couple of weeks to figure it all out, but now I
can pretty much operate most of the thousand and one “must have” functions without
unintentionally changing lanes and running as many red lights and stop signs as
before.

I’m particularly fond of the backup camera and have, in
fact, begun assembling a series of internet video shorts under the title “Backup
Theatre”.

However, I have to spend a little more time working on the
scripts as so far they’re pretty one dimensional and only entail chasing
unsuspecting squirrels eating nuts up my driveway.

Even though the look on their squirrely little faces is
priceless, it only moves the story along so far.

Anyway, this time, with this particular dealer, there was no leg wrestling or shoe spitting required. No harsh demands other than my personal
request for my “sales consultant” to sing a selection of hits from “Hamilton”.

Very entertaining....

No, this time my “consultant” merely asked me what I thought
was a fair deal, which I proffered, along with a baby goat, that he immediately
approved, and then had me kicking myself, since I had obviously proffered way
more than I needed....especially the baby goat.

But a deal's a deal.

Win some lose some.

Besides, the baby goat was eating me out of house and
home...literally.

Now it’s someone else’s problem.

And did I mention this particular new model—the car...not
the goat—comes with an onboard mix master, which I suppose will come in handy
someday.

One never knows when one is going to be in the mood to mix
up a batch of Brownie batter.

9 comments:

Lovely to know that you are a proud new vehicular owner with all the gizmo's I'm sure. I trust you are being faithful to the cause of making America great again. Mind you I checked twice and never saw a Trump once. You keep your cards close to you chest Brian.

Oh come on...I came back 54 years later, I wasn't gone for good! And I did leave you with a shopping cart and helmet...and that made all the difference! Besides, they would have caught up with us eventually robbing all those banks and all. We will always be friends, Brian, because our minds work the same way... :)

I heard that Nordstrom's is now selling jeans that are way dirty - at phenomenal prices, thus starting a trend. I hope this has not extended yet to new/old cars. Better check under the hood. I think it might be worth my while to get ahold of some used hazmat suits and sell them at phenomenal prices.

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About Me

My passion these days is writing silly stories for “The
Freelance Retort”, the humor website I began in May of 2011 when the world was
supposed to come to an end. It didn’t and now I’m stuck writing these things 2
or 3 times a week.My passion before that was chocolate ice cream.

When I’m not doing this, I’m a freelance, corporate writer/director/ producer, which means—besides the many slashes—I create everything from promotional, instructional and training videos to interactive on line presentations for various corporation and health care companies. In that sense I guess you could say that I’m a “professional writer” since I do get paid to write, work from home and have lots of free time to myself. However, most of my friends and neighbors think I’m just goofing off. Naturally, being a freelance writer who deals with the sometimes insanity of the corporate world from the safety of the creative fringe, my views will more often than not be tinged with cynicism, sarcasm and a fair share of self-deprecation. I hope you enjoy them in the spirit in which they are intended….